The Athletic: NHL weekend rankings: We’re back, it’s too early and all the good teams are bad

HipKat

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Welcome back, NHL. And welcome back to the NHL weekend rankings.

If you’re a longtime reader who knows how this all works, feel free to skip ahead to the Bonus Five. But if you’re new, or you could use a refresher, please read the next bit before you rush off to yell at me in the comments.

These rankings are a bit different from some of the others you might find out there. We’re not trying to capture a snapshot of how things stand in the league right now; instead, we’re more interested in trying to figure out how things will end up. The rankings here are based on two questions: Who’s winning the Cup, and who’s going to finish dead last? Simple questions, but hard ones to get right.

So how do we do it? The idea is to take it slow, starting from something that feels like a consensus early on and then gradually adjusting based on what’s happening on the ice. The key there is the “gradually” part; we try really hard not to overreact to a few games here and there. That means a team doesn’t shoot up the rankings just because it has a good week or beats the defending champs. And we don’t give up on a preseason favorite just because it stumbles out of the gate. Hold that thought.

This way of looking at things isn’t better or worse than the more common approach that other rankings take; it’s just different. The advantage is that we’re less likely to get tripped up by short-term flukes — for example, we never had the Oilers as a bottom-five team last year, even when they had the worst record in the league in mid-November. The main downside is some of those overreactions are fun, and I get that it’s frustrating when you see your team ranked behind someone they just beat the brakes off of. And yeah, sometimes we’re a little behind on spotting an important trend. As my kids will tell you, that’s not out of character for me.

So that’s it. Think long-term, react cautiously and don’t expect the rankings to swing wildly based on what happened in the last week. And one more thing: Each week will feature a top and bottom five, plus an extra team in each section that didn’t make the list but feels worth mentioning. That team is not necessarily ranked sixth — if I wanted to do that every week, it would just be a top and bottom six. They’re just a team to talk about. For reasons I’ve never quite understood, this part really seems to trip people up.

Oh, and we also like to throw in a bonus top five based on whatever’s happening. Like this one:

Bonus Five: Way-too-early thoughts about week one​

5. Rangers fans really don’t like Wes McCauley – You guys OK? It’s a long season and you might run into this guy again, maybe pace yourself on the full-throated rage. (Also, yes, this was very clearly goaltender interference, don’t make me tap the article.)

4. The Predators should be fine – You’d like to have a better start after such a splashy offseason, and you certainly would prefer not to be getting shut out by the Red Wings, but I’m not worried about the Predators yet. Nashville fans, you’re good, right?

3. Alexander Ovechkin hasn’t scored all season – A week into the schedule, he’s still sitting at zero goals. Is he cracking under the pressure of the Gretzky goals chase? MY COLUMN. (My column is just the “games played” column on the standings page, which shows the Capitals have played only once.)

2. Somebody give Raphael Lavoie a hug – I mean, it’s nice to be wanted, I guess?


1. The teams that are supposed to be good are all getting rocked – The NHL’s parity era marches on, as it didn’t take us very long to get to the “on any given night” portion of the schedule. With apologies for the spoilers, this week’s top five combined for a record of 5-7-1, which is (runs numbers) not great. Did we mention the whole thing about thinking long-term, and not yelling at me in the comments because an 0-2 team is in the top five? We did. Will it help? It will not.

It’s great to have the NHL back. Let’s get to the rankings.


Road to the Cup​

The five teams with the best chances of winning the Stanley Cup.

Things you don’t see often: The tried and true “pull the goalie with two seconds left and an offensive faceoff” move actually working.

Play: Video

Good old Mark Scheifele, worth every penny, he said, engaging in a little ironic foreshadowing for his next post.

5. New York Rangers (1-0-1, +5 true goals differential*) – Got to hand it to Igor Shesterkin, he certainly showed us both sides of the goaltending coin in his first two starts. One 31-save shutout, one .769 outing in a loss. Should be pretty easy to figure out how to reset the goalie market on an eight-year deal here guys, let’s get it done.

4. Colorado Avalanche (0-2-0, -6) – A pair of losses to start the year is mildly concerning. Alexandar Georgiev failing to make it out of either of his starts is significantly scarier. The Avs are one of the few teams left that still prefers to ride one starter as much as possible, and it’s not like 24-year-old Justus Annunen has looked great in relief. We’ll keep an eye on this one, but for now, the Avalanche get the Islanders at home on Monday night.

Also, this was pretty great:


3. Edmonton Oilers (0-3-0, -12) – After last year, there’s no planet on which we’re going to panic about the Oilers having a slow start. But yeah, it’s been extremely slow. They got crushed by the Jets in the opener and lost to the lowly Blackhawks on Saturday before dropping Sunday night’s edition of the Battle of Alberta. I get that a lot of you want to dunk on them. But … nobody thinks we’re actually doing this, right? We all remember what happened last season. Let’s not get silly.

2. Florida Panthers (1-2-0, -3) – The big story in week one was the injury Aleksander Barkov suffered on opening night in Ottawa. It looked bad, to the extent that the official word of a two-to-three-week absence felt like good news. Losing to the Sabres is not a great sign — more on that in a second — but we can give the defending champs the benefit of the doubt with Barkov out and Spencer Knight making his first start in over a year.

1. Dallas Stars (3-0-0, +6) – Bless the Stars for being the only preseason favorite to actually look like it through week one. You guys had a good shot at the top spot under any circumstances, but three wins made it an easier call. San Jose is up next and is terrible, so let’s just congratulate the Sharks in advance on the upset win.

*Goals differential without counting shootout decisions like the NHL does for some reason.

Not ranked: Utah Hockey Club These guys are fun!

Are they good? So far, they absolutely are, although we’ll need more than three games before we start engraving any trophies. Still, you couldn’t ask for much more from a brand-new team.

(A quick tangent: Yes, apparently they’re a brand-new team, with the league treating them like an expansion team that just happens to have all the same players that last year’s Arizona Coyotes did. It’s weird. It’s also not how the league has handled previous franchise moves. And it means that the answer to a question like “Which franchise did Teemu Selanne score 76 goals for in 1992-93” is apparently now “None of them.” The idea here seems to be that a new Arizona team will be able to recapture the Coyotes’ history in a few years, although you wonder whether new owners would actually want to be linked to a decidedly mediocre past. But yeah, shout out to Connor Ingram for being an all-time franchise leader in games started, with three.)

The big story for this team, apart from existing at all, has been the offense. Utah scored at least five goals in every game, with Clayton Keller averaging two points per game and recently extended Dylan Guenther scoring five goals. They’re also two-for-two in overtime. In terms of pure entertainment value, there hasn’t been a better team to watch over the first week.


If we were new at this, it would almost be enough to have us wondering: Wait, has Utah decided that the best way to capture a brand-new market is to play the sort of exciting, high-event hockey that makes the sport irresistible? Of course, the answer to that is surely no, and coach André Tourigny is probably already hard at work trying to figure out how to turn those 6-5 wins into 2-1 outcomes. It’s perfectly OK for you to hope that he fails, because week one was pretty fantastic.

For now, they’ve got a good test tonight in New Jersey in the season’s first battle of three-win teams. Welcome to the league, Utah fans, you’re getting a hell of a show to kick things off.


The bottom five​

The five teams that are headed towards dead last, and the best lottery odds for James Hagen, or maybe someone else.

We don’t see a lot of surprise transactions early in the season, but we did get one Sunday — sort of. The Red Wings put Ville Husso on waivers, and teams have until this afternoon to put in a claim. The most likely outcome here is that nobody does, the Red Wings get to work some early-season cap magic to ice a full roster and we all move on. But the fact this even felt like a reasonable option is a bad sign for a $4.75 million goalie.

5. Montreal Canadiens (2-1-0, +2) – They’re basically a placeholder here, as they’ve looked good to start the season. Once we get a bit more clarity around some of the teams that are struggling, the Habs look like they’ll be happy to hand their spot over. Until then, let’s all watch Lane Hutson highlights and wonder how this kid made it to the end of the second round.

4. Chicago Blackhawks (1-1-1, -1) – The Connor Bedard scoring title watch is on (five points in three games), and they’re apparently tired of losing. Neither of those facts has prevented them from losing two of their first three, but any time you can beat the Oilers, that’s something to build on.

3. Anaheim Ducks (1-1-0, 0) – A team missing John Gibson in the early going had to be happy with Lukáš Dostál’s first start, a 30-save shutout in San Jose. Less happy: anyone who bought tickets to see two rebuilding teams who haven’t been to the playoffs in five years combine for one goal scored past a goalie. Ah well, a win’s a win.

2. Columbus Blue Jackets (1-1-0, +1) – They split a tough mini road trip to start the year, and now get four straight and seven of eight at home.

1. San Jose Sharks (0-1-1, -3) – Exhibit A in the “Sharks fans can’t have nice things” file: Macklin Celebrini picking up a goal and an assist in his first game, followed by an immediate trip to the injured reserve. That’s the short-term variety, meaning he could be back in a week.

Not ranked: Buffalo Sabres – Let’s check in on Sabres fans a few games into the season and yep, this seems about right.


Granted, that was after three games and before the Panthers win, but you get the idea. The Sabres have kindly volunteered to be our Week One example of the whole “don’t overreact” concept that we love so much in these rankings. We’re not going to take a team that was projected to stick around the Atlantic playoff race and stuff them in the bottom five just based on the first week or two of the season. That’s not what’s we’re about. And that’s a good thing for the Sabres, because if we were going to view the first few games that way… hoo boy.

Let’s summarize. The Sabres had the honor of starting the season in Prague, with two games against the Devils that you only kind of paid attention to because season openers don’t really resonate when they’re played on a weekday afternoon. They lost both in regulation, scoring two goals along the way, and then had a nice five-day break so their fans could freak out.

And sure, you could understand, even though it was just two games — after all, when you’re riding an NHL record 13-year playoff drought and didn’t really do all that much over the offseason other than hire a coach you liked in the ’90s. But you wouldn’t want to worry too much until they at least got back to North America and played a game on home ice.

That one came on Thursday, and all seemed well when they took a 1-0 lead into the third period against the Kings. All was not well. But an upset win over the depleted Panthers on Saturday downgraded this situation from crisis to merely bad, and gives the Sabres something to build on.

Next comes a three-game road trip, albeit one featuring three very beatable teams in Pittsburgh, Columbus and Chicago. After that, well, who knows. This already feels like one of those years where the mood is going to rise and fall game-to-game, if not period-to-period. That’s probably not fair to Kevyn Adams and crew, but it’s also unavoidable under the circumstances. You don’t want your fans to freak out when you lose, well, maybe try winning something meaningful every 13 years or so.
 
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